A potential rework to the level-sync system.

[Vickii]

One of the main reasons I don’t do roulettes very often.

I personally don’t think they’re going to change it at this point to how you want it, just because of the age of the game and how long they’ve gotten away with it.

But for me a nice quality of life change would be to adapt my bars better at least. If you’re going to put me in a level 15 dungeon then put those useless role skills back on my bar without me having to reorganise everything.

[linayar]

But for me a nice quality of life change would be to adapt my bars better at least. If you’re going to put me in a level 15 dungeon then put those useless role skills back on my bar without me having to reorganise everything.

What do you mean? Do you not have role abilities on your hotbar?

The first thing I do when unlocking a job is to setup my hotbar and it's usable across different level syncs without needing to change from level 1 to max level.

[Penthea]

You're not the first person to suggest this and at this point you won't be the last. I'll just repeat what others have said every other time this has been brought up:

"It isn't fun spamming more buttons to be equal to someone who only has access to a 2 button combo."

May or may not be paraphrasing. Then you open a new can of worms about people being rude to others because they don't have access to certain abilities etc something something. tl;dr There are flaws to your suggestion as "nice" as it sounds.

I can see it now, the can of worms you're referring to:

"Oh god the tank isn't synced so we're stuck with smaller pulls"
"The dps isn't synced, our aoe is going to suck"
"The healer isn't synced, they won't be able to handle big pulls"
"Ugh you're all synced, this is going to be so slow"

It would also be demoralising for some newer players to see others use abilities they have no access to from the same class. It could make them feel less powerful. And it could be confusing to them as well because a new player is likely to not know why they can't use Flare but the other blm can despite being the same lvl.

Never mind how higher lvl abilities would completely trivialise some mechanics in lower lvl content. Stuff that is supposed to kill you may not at all because you have access to abilities that far outpace the danger the instance is supposed to bring. This would result in instances feeling like entirely different content depending on how many players are synced or not. And it could also result in new players getting carried to the point that they are used to higher lvl players being able to do most of the work, and then get a huge shock when they end up in a party with no one synced.

[Deceptus]

I can see it now, the can of worms you're referring to:

"Oh god the tank isn't synced so we're stuck with smaller pulls"
"The dps isn't synced, our aoe is going to suck"
"The healer isn't synced, they won't be able to handle big pulls"
"Ugh you're all synced, this is going to be so slow"

It would also be demoralising for some newer players to see others use abilities they have no access to from the same class. It could make them feel less powerful. And it could be confusing to them as well because a new player is likely to not know why they can't use Flare but the other blm can despite being the same lvl.

Few counterpoints:

1) If a tank is a sprout and the healer is a synced 80, they can be drug to the finish line easily.

2) If the healer is a sprout down and the dps is 80 the pulls will die fast enough not to be concerned about their healing

3) On the flip side a sprout dps could see a synced down other dps that is lvl 80 and their flashy skills and it could motivate them to keep leveling that dps or perhaps level the job whose flashy skills they saw.

Or they saw a well played tank or healer and think, "Maybe I'll try to level one of those".

Never mind how higher lvl abilities would completely trivialise some mechanics in lower lvl content. Stuff that is supposed to kill you may not at all because you have access to abilities that far outpace the danger the instance is supposed to bring. This would result in instances feeling like entirely different content depending on how many players are synced or not. And it could also result in new players getting carried to the point that they are used to higher lvl players being able to do most of the work, and then get a huge shock when they end up in a party with no one synced.

People aren't asking for 80's to be in the same dungeons as level 15's normally. They're asking to keep all of their skills so they don't go from 24 buttons to 2.

[Intellion]

I have and always will think we should keep our skills while level synced. Perhaps even a box we can check just like min ilvl is selectable

1) Synced Weapon damage will normalize the damage at lower levels.
2) The content we are talking about is old, and outdated. Who honestly cares if we steamroll it?

Might a DPS pull aggro by blasting foul on a pack of enemies? Yes. Will they die from it? Maybe, maybe not. MAYBE they might learn some aggro management skills that have been lost over the last 6+ years.

In fact, one of the biggest complaints about keeping skills synced down is "What if a DPS goes ham and a tank is a sprout and doesn't have those skills?"

I would bet if we allowed tanks and healers to keep their skills synced down and the DPS to not keep them to avoid that exact scenario, DPS would be screaming to keep their skills.

I've been in numerous dungeons where the tanks were utterly incompetent and we still managed the run. Hell, I've tanked low level instances on my SCH PLENTY of times because of a sprout tank who for some reason didn't know aoe existed or never turned on their tank stance. Even after being asked to do it.

Low level instances are nothing more than DPS races anyway. If for some reason, you don't know how to properly play your job by Dzemael Darkhold, where most jobs should have a good deal of their kit, that's a you problem and quite honestly you simply need to play a bit better.

For those people who for some reason demand the challenge, minimum ilvl exists. Go find like minded people who share your goals.

Thank you very much for this. I share these exact sentiments, but you worded it much better than I could.


To be quite frank, people argue against this topic by bringing up balance, challenge, potential newbies getting discouraged, and so forth. However, what I actually observe in-game is the exact opposite of these claims.

1.) Balance? Even with levels, ilvls, AND skills currently getting synced down, older content is a mindless faceroll anyways. There is no more challenge whatsoever since even synced players are ridiculously strong, and whether they're veterans or sprouts, the common sentiment is that everyone just wants to get these old content over with in the first place; veterans just want to get out ASAP for the tomes, and sprouts just wanna get it over with ASAP to proceed with the story. Never once have I seen anyone, sprout or synced player, ever say things like, "Hey tank, can you please slow down? I wanna fully explore Copperbell Mines/proceed as originally intended" or something like that. And when you look at party finder and see sprouts or latecomers trying to get late clears of old content for the first time, what do you see? "Unsynced, please help me get my first clear," and not "Synced, I want to experience this as intended."

2.) Challenge? Same thing as balance, refer to #1

3.) Newbies getting discouraged by veterans unleashing flashy skills? What? That's the complete opposite of everything I've personally observed in all MMOs I've played since the early 2000s. In just about all MMOs I've played, including FFXIV, when newbies see veterans pulling off cool, endgame attacks and combos, they are more inspired by it rather than discouraged. It was the same in Maplestory when newbies aspired to reach high levels to pull off the cool stuff the pros are doing, and it's also the same in FFXIV, when sprouts thank me or get excited or even try to befriend me when I use my endgame AoE combos and such to one-shot mobs that the sprout didn't mean to aggro and almost overwhelmed them.

Based on my personal experience, if old content is going to be a mindless faceroll anyways, and both veterans and sprouts are just trying to get them over with ASAP for different reasons, then the only thing that letting veterans have their full kits in old content will do is to make old content less boring for them. Removing skill sync won't turn these old content into a faceroll if they're currently already a faceroll to begin with, IMO.


I mean, let's be honest. Just about most people would prefer braindead easy content where they get to use 24 skills as opposed to braindead easy content where they only get to spam two buttons over and over.

[Vyrerus]

Meanwhile, you get oddities like Samurai being hilariously and comically weak at level 70.

You're going to have to explain this? Do you mean relative to Dancer? At 70 Samurai has an 850 potency line AOE that's non-diminishing every other pull, a 360 potency GCD every 5 GCDs also non-diminishing, and a 150 potency resource spending aoe with an absurdly high target cap. 360 potency can be buffed to 540 for more efficient resource spending.

Meanwhile a Dancer at 70 has Technical Finish, 1500, diminished to 375 on every target after, Standard Finish, 1000 reduced to 250 for every target after, 150 > 200 pot combo with 350 and 300 pot proc aoes that reduce to 175/150 to every target beyond first. Oh and the 100 pot Fan Dance II and Fan Dance III oGCD combo, also based on procs.

Technical Finish compared to Hissatsu: Guren against 8 target pull:

TF -> 4125 total potency
HisG - > 6800 total potency -> Samurai Wins.

SF -> 2750 potency
Tenka Goken unbuffed -> 2880(4320 buffed) potency -> Samurai Wins.

Windmill -> 1200 pot
Fuga -> 800 pot -> Samurai loses

Bladeshower -> 1600 pot
Mangetsu -> 1280 pot -> Samurai loses

Fan Dance II -> 800 pot
His Kyuten -> 1200 pot -> Samurai wins

Samurai has to build Jinpu and debatably Shifu first, but Dancer loses GCDs while dancing to build their steps.
Dancer has more potency on general AOEs due to enhanced action damage trait, and higher base AOE potency, but it's executing GCDs more slowly, and has to rely on procs for its highest damage ones to come out, granted the proc rate is pretty high.

I guess maybe if the pull goes on long enough, then Dancer catches up and overcomes them, but then Samurai pulls ahead on bosses. If the pulls are smaller, results change too, as smaller pulls are better for the diminising AOEs. I just don't see what makes it laughably weak.

[Vyrerus]

And as far as the OP goes, I understand wanting to not be bored in low level dungeons, but what will wind up happening is people killing monsters so fast, that a lot of jobs can't be played in a satisfying way.

Think of deep dungeons. Up until the 101+ and 31+ floors, monsters die so fast in them, that you never get to use all of your abilities until the boss floors. This remains true for a long time in both, and it makes them really annoying to play in, at times. For instance, Wildfire on MCH can barely be used on trash, even into very deep floors, without actually detonating it early manually.

It's better if we just take it in stride, the old content dies so fast anyway.

[Intellion]

And as far as the OP goes, I understand wanting to not be bored in low level dungeons, but what will wind up happening is people killing monsters so fast, that a lot of jobs can't be played in a satisfying way.

Think of deep dungeons. Up until the 101+ and 31+ floors, monsters die so fast in them, that you never get to use all of your abilities until the boss floors. This remains true for a long time in both, and it makes them really annoying to play in, at times. For instance, Wildfire on MCH can barely be used on trash, even into very deep floors, without actually detonating it early manually.

It's better if we just take it in stride, the old content dies so fast anyway.

That'd be true if Lv. 80 players are thrust into low-level content. That is not what I'm proposing though. Even if skill sync is removed per my suggestion, veterans will still be level synced and ilvl synced, which would still prevent one-shots and insta-kills.
And as I've mentioned earlier, if old-content is still a mindless stomp with or without skill sync, I'm pretty sure 99% of people would agree that being able to use all 24 skills would still be more satisfying and fun that being forced to spam only two skills over and over ad nauseum. So why not make something mindless even just slightly more fun?

Because I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't define pressing one or two buttons over and over in mindlessly easy content as "playing a job in a satisfying way," especially when the typical FFXIV player disables level sync when trying to clear old content for the first time via Party Finder or when trying to farm said old content for glamour/items/etc.

[SamsonBlacke]

if you wanna use your entire kit at any level, just play Blue Mage.

[Penthea]

1) If a tank is a sprout and the healer is a synced 80, they can be drug to the finish line easily.

So you think it's a good thing if the tank can be carried? Also this situation only works if the healer is not a similar lvl to the tank. My comment about tanks would still stand if the healer wasn't at high enough lvl to carry the tank.

2) If the healer is a sprout down and the dps is 80 the pulls will die fast enough not to be concerned about their healing

Again this is framing being carried as an okay thing. And again this would happen only sometimes. What do you think would happen to a new healer player who happened to get lvl 80 dps in every instance and then suddenly does not? Well then suddenly the demands of their role could rise very considerably and they would be unprepared for it due to lack of experience with needing to heal a party that needs well timed heals.

3) On the flip side a sprout dps could see a synced down other dps that is lvl 80 and their flashy skills and it could motivate them to keep leveling that dps or perhaps level the job whose flashy skills they saw.

Sure that's true but I know that personally I wouldn't have been a fan of watching the other dps being able to do so much more than I could simply because of game design, and not anything that is my fault. I wouldn't have liked to feel as if my contribution mattered very little because the other dps was far higher lvl and I was unsynced. I HATE getting boosted.

People aren't asking for 80's to be in the same dungeons as level 15's normally. They're asking to keep all of their skills so they don't go from 24 buttons to 2.

And asking for this means a person fails to understand that lower lvl content is balanced with the parties having certain abilities in mind. Some higher lvl abilities would trivialise older content. And they're not all ogcds or major cds. Having strong aoe on its own can make a dungeon a joke if it's balanced for lower lvl classes who do not have strong aoe at that point.

Sure SE could rebalance the dungeons so that higher lvl abilities do not trivialise content but then that's asking SE to rework several expansions worth of content which is a tremendous amount of work to fix something that isn't even a big problem. I would go as far as to say that it's not even a problem. If a player doesn't want to get lvl synced, then they should avoid content that lvl syncs them. You can still cap your tomes while entirely avoiding lvl synced content.

However I will admit that the xp buff on some servers does land some players being much higher lvl than the content the msq requires them to do, but that is a fault of the xp gain being too high and being unable to turn off the buff. Not the nature of the balance of content being bad.